His problem was the monotony of life and a feeling of being basically too secure and too happy.
With all the homeless shelters, soup kitchens and other places where people have tremendous need within a short Uber ride, it just strikes me as odd to devote so much time to building first world toy to take you far away.
Want to live and feel like your life has a purpose? Volunteer or pick a random needy person to send on the trip Europe. Give them a camera and hope they bring you back some pictures.
I know this is an unpopular perspective, but when your job and life isolate you from the suffering and need (and risk and danger) around the corner, then the answer shouldn't "build me an app so the world can dance for me. Dance, world, dance! I'm boooorrredd."
Hell, build an app that actually helps more than one person. The irony of ironies was acknowledging his white privilege while being clueless to the larger Western-world-privilege and too-much-disposable-income-privilege.
Bahh. By all means travel. By all means make apps to entertain yourself. But do we need an national news agency covering the guy who got bored with life so found a way to make it work harder to please him? And what the hell, NPR, really? The guy who burns tons of CO2 cause he got bored -- no environmental impact assessment?
And don't get me wrong, the guy sounds like a good guy. I'm sure he's friendly, sociable and all the good things.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.
Who also said this:
> Although both love and knowledge are necessary, love is in a sense more fundamental, since it will lead intelligent people to seek knowledge, in order to find out how to benefit those whom they love. But if people are not intelligent, they will be content to believe what they have been told, and may do harm in spite of the most genuine benevolence.
Life is a big word, and I find a collection of unrelated experiences without connecting any dots to be more a hysterical undertaking born of lack and leading to more want. Others can disagree, but they cannot tell me what fulfills me in my life. Life is too short to be a coward about it, life is to short to not face the music, life is too short to not own up. Ultimately, I care more about saving myself than anyone else: I need to not be crooked, I can't help everybody but if I help nobody who would I be?
And frankly, I don't know a single selfish person who seems happy, they all seem scared, like feeding some monster in their basement that is never full and just keeps growing. Life is too short to have pity on them, or to accept what they offer.
> Say honestly, "I love arm-chairs better than free men, and pursue them because I choose; not because circumstances make me. I love hats, large, large hats, with many feathers and great bows; and I would rather have those hats than trouble myself about social dreams that will never be accomplished in my day. The world worships hats, and I wish to worship with them."
> But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom will become easy.
-- Voltairine de Cleyre, "The Dominant Idea"
Your comment comes off as far more vitriolic than his.
He raises a good point; that this "problem" of not being happy with a life that already has safety, security, and many things guaranteed that others might die never having, is not exactly the pinnacle of "being in-touch" the article makes it out to be - on reading that the guy is making apps/etc to let others do this I'm already anyicipating the fad coming and going, and people like you spitting contempt once it reaches the passé phase without really thinking about how it came about - whereas your comment raises none and is more outwardly hateful -
> I just want you to cut the bullshit attitude
- than his much more reasonably presented one.
'moneytalks might genuinely be interested in convincing people that it's more worth finding ways to step out of their comfort zone and help others, than it's worth using some kind of "randomize my life" app. If he is so interested, then he goes about it in the worst way possible - what he ostensibly advocates is difficult enough for many folks to contemplate, without adding the apparent likelihood of doing so only in order to have to put up with the kind of pretentious, contemptuous priggery we see on display here. But 'moneytalks spends so much more effort on being a pretentious, contemptuous prig, rather than suggesting it might be worthwhile to do somebody a good turn, that it's very hard to credit his interest being in the latter, rather than the former.
That's what merits my ire and my vitriol. I don't care if some random Google or Amazon or whatever decides to shake up his routine in the most stereotypically Silicon Valley way possible. I agree there are lower-effort, higher-impact ways to go about that, but I'm not going to get all judgey over it. I am going to get all judgey over somebody using "we should help other people" as an excuse to spit contempt that makes no one want to actually do that, and if anything puts people off.
If you want to get all precious and self-gratifying and put yourself on a pedestal over other people, read Pitchfork and be a music hipster, or Petapixel and be a camera hipster, or pick some other ancillary realm of human endeavor, where the distaste your behavior elicits will do no harm. Being a helping-people hipster goes from useless but harmless to actively toxic, and I don't see why anyone should expect to get a pass on that.
Even when it comes to something as "simple" as music, I've never found a "favorite" band through something like Spotify. Good music, sure, but the "bar raisers" alway comes from randomness - radio, odd bar show, personal recommendation, cabbie's CD player, etc.
https://open.spotify.com/user/machinebrother/playlist/6p21dR...
It updates with 30 random songs every day.
Why take a tuk-tuk to a waterfall that might not be there (that sounds like what you'd call a scam, to me) when you can take a tuk-tuk to a waterfall that definitely is there?
Some people travel for sightseeing, others for personal growth.
Because if it is there, it will be pristine and untouched save for the few local people that know about it. And meeting the locals might be more interesting than meeting the other tourists at the crowded waterfall on Trip Advisor.
In my opinion, it's the only way to travel.
I have never understood planning in advance your entire holiday down to the hour. I guess it's more important if you're American and only get 2 weeks of holiday a year.
Not to mention, people who frantically try to optimise their time on holiday do so because it's the only week off they can afford this year, and they don't want it to be wasted.
These days, the common areas of hostels are full of people staring at glowing screens, while hostel managers try to figure out how to get the guests to interact...
I did 3 backpacking trips (total around 27 months) back when smartphones weren't prevalent and it was (and has always been) mostly about trying out weird shit (such as fruit picking) going to places and meeting (loads) of people.
Sadly even that is probably changed now and I bet that the modern hostels are places were people stay in isolation and stare at their phones instead of socializing with each other ;-(
You hung out in a hostel, had conversations with other travelers (instead of thumbing through Instagram), and let the randomness of other people and life, not apps, dictate your itinerary. You walk down a street, "oh hey that looks interesting", and wander down a quiet alley that leads to cute cafe, or jump in the back of a tuk-tuk headed to a waterfall that may or may not really exist, but who cares? You're riding the wave. One of the main reasons for travel/holidays is to break from routine, and the single most significant one can do, bear with me Silicon Valley, is to put away that smartphone. Try exercising your intuition instead of apps.
Many folks nowadays have optimised their lives so much that they've needed to create a noise-generator to bring back some humanity.